“I read to my boys now,” Perez said last week while taking a break from a tutoring session at the Amarillo Public Library downtown branch. “I even learned how to start texting them. My boys were real excited about that.”

Perez is one of eight adult students taking part in the library’s Read to Succeed program, which trains tutors and pairs them with students who need help improving reading skills.

Friends of the Amarillo Public Library will raise funds and awareness for the reading program in a pair of events Saturday.

The Open Book Festival kicks off at 10 a.m. Saturday, featuring story time and other children’s activities, book sales by local authors and other activities, including the Little Knowledge Trivia Contest. Casts of musicals from all four Amarillo high schools will present songs from their shows, all of which have a literary basis.

Admission and most activities are free except for the trivia contest, which costs $15 per entrant on teams of up to eight adults.

Lisa White, the library’s literacy coordinator, said she hopes the events draw more attention to the Read to Succeed program, which launched in January.

With additional funds, the program could buy new computers, furniture and additional education materials, she said, helping to add to the program’s success stories.

“We’ve helped an elderly lady ... whose mother pulled her out of school in third grade. ... Now, her reading has improved so much that she was able to help her 80-year-old neighbor apply for Social Security and food stamps,” White said.

Others, like Perez, are working on their GED certificates.

He dropped out of school in seventh grade, then returned for a time before dropping out completely as a high school junior. But despite 11 years of schooling, he never learned to read on his own.

“I was in sports,” he said. “When you were in sports back then, they didn’t care too much. They let you keep going. And my girlfriends did my homework.”

Perez said he is pursuing his GED as a parole condition, though now that he’s begun learning to read, he has no intention of stopping.

“Even if they would allow me to quit, I wouldn’t,” Perez said. “I want to learn regardless. I didn’t learn nothing (in school), and I regret it now.”

That’s the kind of attitude that drew tutor Marcus Moreno to the program.

His own grandmother never learned to read.

“When I went away in the military, she could not read my letters,” Moreno said. “My uncle had to read them to her.

“I use those memories as motivation and inspiration in helping inspire others.”

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